Is there somewhere where ideas like this are discussed intelligently?
A few thoughts
If the experiments in governance are atheoretical, then I’d expect most of them to be worse. Just as most random mutations in a complex organism are likely to be worse.
Experimentation has a cost, what is the expected benefit from experimenting with different forms of government. How is that expected benefit justified?
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of seasteading and competitive governments, I just find it disheartening when people don’t want to try applying their brains to the problem of at least narrowing down the space of how governments should be designed.
Is there somewhere where ideas like this are discussed intelligently?
I’m not aware of a single central hub for such discussion I’m afraid. There’s academic work in the area of development economics which looks at countries around the world and tries to identify what traits of governmental institutions seem to correspond with economic growth and prosperity. This is where Paul Romer and his charter cities idea is coming from.
If you want some really out there but intelligent discussion of related ideas you might want to check out Unqualified Reservations. Maybe start with the gentle introduction series. Mencius Moldbug could be described as many things but concise is not one of them so you’re looking at a fair bit of reading there.
Arnold Kling blogs on this topic a bit as well, he has a particular interest in the idea of ‘unbundling’ government services.
If the experiments in governance are atheoretical, then I’d expect most of them to be worse. Just as most random mutations in a complex organism are likely to be worse.
Think of competitive government as a meta-theory of political mechanisms in the same way a well functioning market economy represents a meta-theory of producing efficient organizations rather than a theory of how to run an efficient organization. The question is how to structure things in a way that there is an incentive for good governance. If you get the incentive structure right then good governance will tend to outcompete bad governance. The individual experiments would not be atheoretical but the structure under which they operate is intended to be agnostic about what the best approach will prove to be.
Many of the people you’ll see talking about competitive government are libertarian leaning and so would have their own personal ideas about how to run a government but rather than privileging their own pet theories they want to put them to the test against other ideas about how to run things. A Thousand Nations emphasizes that traditional ideological opponents could in theory both get behind the idea of competitive government as it would give them the opportunity to go and test out their own utopian ideals without having to convince anyone else.
Experimentation has a cost, what is the expected benefit from experimenting with different forms of government. How is that expected benefit justified?
I don’t see how this is any different in principle from the question of the value of experimentation and innovation in general. Many technologies ultimately prove to be market failures but I think the evidence is pretty compelling that economies that follow a free market model and ‘waste’ resources on ideas that don’t pan out have a better track record of producing net benefits through innovation than economies that attempt to centrally plan innovation.
I just find it disheartening when people don’t want to try applying their brains to the problem of at least narrowing down the space of how governments should be designed.
I don’t believe advocates of competitive government are generally doing this. They just don’t believe that their own ideas should be given special privileges over everyone else’s.
Is there somewhere where ideas like this are discussed intelligently?
Hmm… Actually in most places, the host will be slightly biased towards their own ideas and will not really be engaging in discussing new ideas. In Matt’s endorsement of unqualified reservations, he’s suggesting a blog where the host almost never replies back to comments, but it is well written reactionary stuff.
I just find it disheartening when people don’t want to try applying their brains to the problem of at least narrowing down the space of how governments should be designed.
I guess that until competitive government becomes really feasible in a mass scale, this thought is very theoritical. Quite rationally, people want to cross the bridge when they come to it.
About the actual design, it’s like Eliezer explained when people asked him about how he did his AI box thingy, there is no substitute for thinking hard. You really have to think about incentives of every person in every role in the whole structure.
Mencius short circuits this by assuming a corporate structure and says that since it works well enough in the real world, it would work in a sovereign structure also. This is a good argument from the outside view. Simple hierarchy is definitely a solution to Goodhart’s law as I had mentioned in my post, but as Robin Hanson had pointed out in his comment, it feels like a cop-out.
I found the discussion between Moldbug and Robin Hanson interesting because whilst Robin Hanson has lots of interesting ideas he does not write terribly well. He communicates his idea clearly but there is no style to his writing. Contrast Moldbug (or Eliezer) and see the impact of interesting ideas expressed with eloquence and you being to appreciate the power of language.
I wonder if I give excessive weight to Unqualified Reservations because it has such greater facility with the English language than is typical of the blogosphere. Interesting and controversial ideas expressed with rhetorical flair seem to directly trigger the reward centres of my brain.
I guess that until competitive government becomes really feasible in a mass scale, this thought is very theoritical.
One of the things I particularly like about the idea of competitive government is it gives you something practical to do now as an individual. Look around the world and consciously pick a country to live in based on the value offered by its government. Surprisingly few people do this but the few that do have been enough to give us the likes of Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, etc.
I think being an immigrant gives you a different perspective on things. I’ve spent most of my productive adult life in a country where I pay taxes and have no right to vote. This somehow makes the myth of democracy less potent for me.
Are you familiar with the background to patrissimo’s comment? Competitive government is what he’s getting at in the comment you linked.
Is there somewhere where ideas like this are discussed intelligently?
A few thoughts
If the experiments in governance are atheoretical, then I’d expect most of them to be worse. Just as most random mutations in a complex organism are likely to be worse.
Experimentation has a cost, what is the expected benefit from experimenting with different forms of government. How is that expected benefit justified?
Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of seasteading and competitive governments, I just find it disheartening when people don’t want to try applying their brains to the problem of at least narrowing down the space of how governments should be designed.
I’m not aware of a single central hub for such discussion I’m afraid. There’s academic work in the area of development economics which looks at countries around the world and tries to identify what traits of governmental institutions seem to correspond with economic growth and prosperity. This is where Paul Romer and his charter cities idea is coming from.
If you want some really out there but intelligent discussion of related ideas you might want to check out Unqualified Reservations. Maybe start with the gentle introduction series. Mencius Moldbug could be described as many things but concise is not one of them so you’re looking at a fair bit of reading there.
Arnold Kling blogs on this topic a bit as well, he has a particular interest in the idea of ‘unbundling’ government services.
Think of competitive government as a meta-theory of political mechanisms in the same way a well functioning market economy represents a meta-theory of producing efficient organizations rather than a theory of how to run an efficient organization. The question is how to structure things in a way that there is an incentive for good governance. If you get the incentive structure right then good governance will tend to outcompete bad governance. The individual experiments would not be atheoretical but the structure under which they operate is intended to be agnostic about what the best approach will prove to be.
Many of the people you’ll see talking about competitive government are libertarian leaning and so would have their own personal ideas about how to run a government but rather than privileging their own pet theories they want to put them to the test against other ideas about how to run things. A Thousand Nations emphasizes that traditional ideological opponents could in theory both get behind the idea of competitive government as it would give them the opportunity to go and test out their own utopian ideals without having to convince anyone else.
I don’t see how this is any different in principle from the question of the value of experimentation and innovation in general. Many technologies ultimately prove to be market failures but I think the evidence is pretty compelling that economies that follow a free market model and ‘waste’ resources on ideas that don’t pan out have a better track record of producing net benefits through innovation than economies that attempt to centrally plan innovation.
I don’t believe advocates of competitive government are generally doing this. They just don’t believe that their own ideas should be given special privileges over everyone else’s.
Hmm… Actually in most places, the host will be slightly biased towards their own ideas and will not really be engaging in discussing new ideas. In Matt’s endorsement of unqualified reservations, he’s suggesting a blog where the host almost never replies back to comments, but it is well written reactionary stuff.
I guess that until competitive government becomes really feasible in a mass scale, this thought is very theoritical. Quite rationally, people want to cross the bridge when they come to it.
About the actual design, it’s like Eliezer explained when people asked him about how he did his AI box thingy, there is no substitute for thinking hard. You really have to think about incentives of every person in every role in the whole structure.
Mencius short circuits this by assuming a corporate structure and says that since it works well enough in the real world, it would work in a sovereign structure also. This is a good argument from the outside view. Simple hierarchy is definitely a solution to Goodhart’s law as I had mentioned in my post, but as Robin Hanson had pointed out in his comment, it feels like a cop-out.
I found the discussion between Moldbug and Robin Hanson interesting because whilst Robin Hanson has lots of interesting ideas he does not write terribly well. He communicates his idea clearly but there is no style to his writing. Contrast Moldbug (or Eliezer) and see the impact of interesting ideas expressed with eloquence and you being to appreciate the power of language.
I wonder if I give excessive weight to Unqualified Reservations because it has such greater facility with the English language than is typical of the blogosphere. Interesting and controversial ideas expressed with rhetorical flair seem to directly trigger the reward centres of my brain.
One of the things I particularly like about the idea of competitive government is it gives you something practical to do now as an individual. Look around the world and consciously pick a country to live in based on the value offered by its government. Surprisingly few people do this but the few that do have been enough to give us the likes of Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, etc.
I think being an immigrant gives you a different perspective on things. I’ve spent most of my productive adult life in a country where I pay taxes and have no right to vote. This somehow makes the myth of democracy less potent for me.
I’d assumed there was something going on in the seasteading sphere. But I wasn’t sure what exactly.
An interesting idea, thanks for the link.